Celebration and Chip's Birthday Plans

We celebrated our contract on our new house by going out to our favorite restaurant, Baraonda for drinks and margherita pizzas. Matt had a white chocolate martini, and Patty had a Peroni in the bottle. It was fantastico! Gabriel ate his dinner, too, while we were there, and fell into a food coma shortly thereafter. Even in his sleep, he charmed the man sitting next to him.

We figured out what we're going to do for Chipdip's birthday party. We're going to have it on Sunday, 24 July. It's only two days after we start to move in, but since we're going to have movers do the big stuff, all we'll really have to do for the party is unpack the kitchen and decorate. We aren't sure about the theme, but we think it might be either trains (because he loves trains) or cowboys (because he's a country boy now!). We hope to buy a grill by then so we can grill hamburgers and hotdogs, and we'll have little snack bowls for the babies filled with veggie puffs. We'll put balloons on the mailbox and set up the kiddie pool in the back yard. Of course, the Angle Bar will be open for business, but then it never really closes. Besides the cake for Gabriel and the cake for everyone else and some favors for the guests which will remain secret for the time being, that's about it. We'll probably set the time for about 4:00 pm so that it won't interfere with naptimes for his friends and so we have more time to unpack and decorate that day. Mark your calendars!

It's Official!

We are under contract for our new house. We didn't want to blog this until we were certain, but it's official. We will be closing on 20 July and moving in on 22 July. This is the most beautiful house. It's in perfect condition; we had to really look hard to find anything wrong with it, and all we found were a couple of barely noticable cracks and a broken retaining wall, which we'll fix in the fall when the tree next to it is dormant so we can trim its roots at the same time. The house is currently owned by its original owner, an architect/city planner, who changed the builders' plans to make it original and better-planned. When we walked through with our agent, who is incredible by the way and whose contact information we're happy to pass along should anyone be looking for a realtor in the Atlanta area, he kept remarking that the builders put in a lot of thoughtful details that most don't even consider. He used to work for a builder, so he noticed many thing that we wouldn't have noticed. He gave it an easy 95 out of 100 as far as all of the houses he's seen, taking off for the retaining wall most likely. When the realtor's amazed, you know you're onto something. We were also totally floored from the second we walked into the house, and as soon as we saw the magnolia tree in the front yard, we knew that it was a sign from above. Our dream of our southern house was to have a big porch and a magnolia tree in the yard. We've got both.

Anyway, it has 3 bedrooms and one of the most spacious kitchens we've ever seen. It's on between 3/4 and 1 acre of land, most of which is woods. The guest room is spacious, and the master bathroom is amazing. The jetted tub is in front of wall-to-ceiling windows looking into the woods. The top of the shower is open so that outside light gets in - it's a brilliant design. In fact, the kitchen/breakfast area bay windows and the family room windows are floor-to-ceiling and facing the woods, also. Because the house is on a cul-de-sac, we can't see our neighbors at all from the back deck. The landscaping is gorgeous, and there are many places we will be able to plant gardens and flowers. It's a perfect southern home out in horse country. It's also in Civil War territory, near a significant battlefield of the Atlanta campaign, Kennesaw Mountain. We wonder whether there might be some war artifacts on our property. It will be fun looking!

Gabriel is really going to love this place. He is finally getting his own room [which means that we're finally getting our own room!], and he will have the woods to explore and lots of places nearby where we can go to do fun stuff. Besides the Civil War stuff, there's a Six Flags, a water park owned by Six Flags, a great park (Oregon Park), and lots of fantastic hiking [not to mention that for us, there's some great upscale shopping and a really good farmers' fruit "stand" (little store)]. We can imagine him doing his homework at the kitchen counter while Dad reads the paper and Mom bakes bread. This house is perfect for all three of us.

Here are some more photos; all were taken from the listing realty company's web site:

Living room

Master bedroom

Dining room

House Hunting

Well, we haven't dropped off the face of the earth, but we've been really busy looking for houses. Besides, we know everyone just wants pictures of Gabriel, and we still don't have a camera cable to replace the one he ate.

Anyway, we put in a bid on a house today, so we will find out tomorrow what the sellers think of it. Our closing in Ann Arbor is on 13 June, so we'll be up there next week for that. We'd like to be in a new house by the middle of July. It will be Gabriel's birthday present, maybe.

Gabriel is growing so quickly. He hardly uses his walker anymore, because he can get closer to things if he crawls over and stands up on them. He slept for 10 hours straight last night, but it's looking like he's going to be up all night tonight. Right now, he is jumping up and down on his bed, holding on to the rail. He's shaking his head like a weirdo and laughing about it. He's also pushing his face against the mesh and trying to lick his mommy's face and then jumping up and looking down at her, laughing. He needs to get to sleep!

We saw that the Miss Universe pageant is live in Thailand. We really miss it there. Even though we were glad to come home to our comforts (like a bed without ants and a familiar bathroom), we have missed it so much ever since we got back. Our plan is to go back there for our 5 year anniversary, if we can wait that long.

To the Garden! Twice.

Today seemed to be dedicated to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. We're doing our best to get everything we can out of our membership and I have to say we're doing a pretty darn good job of it. Today was playgroup for Patty and Gabe and for something different the group decided to meet at the Botanical Garden. Today it was just Patty and Gabe, Diana and Jake, and Maria and Zoe and they all had a great time exploring the Children's Garden. They found some impressive bullfrogs and some that were still in the tadpole stage. They were all enjoying things so much that they ran over the normal playgroup end time of 4:00 and didn't break things up until 4:45. On such a beautiful day, who could blame them?

That made things interesting, however, because Matt's softball game was at 6:00. Of course traffic decided not to cooperate, it never does when time is short. Matt started the game wearing his khaki work pants (Matt would like to point out that they were actually stone color, not khaki tan) and his brown cap-toed work shoes. Even though the mighty Intimidators started out down by a six runs after the first inning to the boys from Flight Test, they battled their way back behind a massive fourth inning. Matt was the last run across the plate in the sixth inning when the team had scored enough runs to invoke the "12 runs after 6 inning" mercy rule. For the day, Matt was three for three with two singles, a double, two walks, one RBI and three runs scored. The final was 19-7 and it turned out to be a really fun game, especially after Matt got a chance to change into shorts and cleats during the third inning (Patty and Gabe made it in time for the game, Matt just didn't get a chance to change until then). It felt really good to win again and even our record at three and three. The first half of the season is now over and we'll start the second next week.

After the game the Angles boogied back down to Midtown to go back to the Botanical Gardens. Why? Well, because it's the last Wednesday of the month! Every month on the last Wednesday the Gardens has Cocktails in the Garden and they stay open until 9:00. It costs six dollars for members even to get in, but that price includes one free cocktail and free munchies. Tonight they featured a drink called the "Loose Caboose" in honor of the train exhibit going on there right now. The food was some really tasty shrimp and one of our favorite desserts in the entire city: chocolate soup from Soto Soto! The chocolate soup alone would have been more than worth the $6! Mmmm... chocolate soup... garlgarlgarl...

Before we left Patty wanted to show Matt where she and Gabe had hung out over in the Children's Garden. We walked up to the entrance to it (it's sort of separated from the rest of the ABG) and the gate was closed. We went to the front desk and asked if it was closed, but the woman there said no and that we should go over if we wanted, only to be careful because the lighting isn't very good over there. As we were crossing the bridge over the parking lot (it's like a kiddie overpass), the high-strung security guard that we had noticed earlier barking orders into his walkie-talkie saw us and yelled brusquely up from the parking lot that the Children's Garden was closed. Matt answered, loudly, that that was not what they had told us at the front desk. The guard went off to check and Patty and Matt went on their way, shrugging their shoulders. We breezed through, checking on the frogs (still there) and were on our way out when the guard materialized. Matt had bet Patty that he wouldn't apologize to us if we saw him again and Matt now owes some money to his wife. He turned out to be really nice and told us that the woman at the desk wasn't aware that there was virtually no lighting in that part of the ABG and they had decided to close it so no one would get hurt. He didn't order us to leave or anything, but we were already on our way out and didn't want to press our luck. The whole experience made us chuckle.

Patty and Matt have really found themselves exhausted the past couple of days and it has hit us quite hard today. After getting home we pretty much only did the basics (all involving Gabe) and are ready to hit the bed. Gabe has been waking at strange times during the night and throwing off everyone's sleep schedule, which is making for a lot of drooping eyes around the Angle household. Matt had to resort to *gasp* chocolate during the day at work today to give him a shot of energy. We know that things will settle down eventually, but we've got a lot of work to do before we get there. We're looking forward to it, actually.

Sorry that we still are unable to put up any pictures. Matt looked at the USB cable that Chip decided to bite with the eye of an electrical systems corrective action engineer and noticed that the little chomper even bit through the metal shielding that wraps the actual wires inside the cable. Very impressive! Rest assured that we are still taking pictures and will post them as soon as we can get a new cable.

No Photos

Well, we won't be posting photos tonight. Our little hamster crawled under the desk and chewed through the camera cable. Guess we should buy him some chewtoys...

The little guy had quite a day today, so we're going to take the opportunity while he is sleeping to relax in the living room for a while. We'll have lots to blog about tomorrow - playgroup, softball, and social irrigation.